Susan Crockford writes
…commenter Brad Keyes at The Conversation defends the use of the “Ursus bogus” image with this astonishing statement:
“The problem is, only sensational exaggeration makes the kind of story that will get politicians’—and readers’—attention. So, yes, climate scientists might exaggerate, but in today’s world, this is the only way to assure any political action and thus more federal financing to reduce the scientific uncertainty.”
More at her Polar Bear Blog
Clearly “scientific uncertainty” is an assymptotic function tending towards 100%, but like the Witch of Endor, never quite getting there. The philosophical implication of this for mathematical logic is astonishing: a multi-valued logic in which truth (represented conventionally) as unity is absent!
So it’s that simple.
Exaggerated threat for more research funding.
Tulips are beautiful. We need support for our Tulip financial market.
“More federal financing” and that boys and girls is what climate science is all about.
And how do you get more?
Answer: With lots and lots of scary, scary stories.
Noble Cause Corruption by the Public Agency Training Counsel
In Romans 3:8 Paul had to address this problem:
Hollywood movies advocating this are particularly pernicious and destructive to our Judeo-Christian Western Worldview.
The classic vicious cycle, laid bare.
Dog bites man quote right there.
Time to defund all the sciences and universities. Let them start over and earn their reputations the hard way through actually providing something useful.
The more I read the more contempt I have for acadamia and ‘psyence’
The gravest threat to humanity is considered basically like a toothpaste to be marketed
There are also other words for people who lie to get money and attention.
And the rubber goalposts of what constitutes “science” bend again…
Gail Combs says:
January 21, 2014 at 11:00 am
Time to defund all the sciences and universities. Let them start over and earn their reputations the hard way through actually providing something useful.
The more I read the more contempt I have for acadamia and ‘psyence’
*
YES! This is the only way to cut out the rot and move forward.
The seduction isn’t caused the “federal financing”. Most scientists can earn lots of money, quite legitimately – in other fields, if they are willing to lie.
The problem is the desire for “political action”. Because it is good and noble to want to change the world for the better.
Yet how do you know that it is a change for the better if the costs and risks are all mis-estimated for the sake of urging action?
In other words, our cause is just because we say so, and if you can’t see it, we’ll lie until you believe us … and then you’ll pay us ever increasing sums to keep telling you ever more outrageous lies … ad infinitum … ad nauseam
Is this justifying what may be fraud ? It would be interesting to hear from someone with some legal knowledge on this.
Dear Mr Keyes, it’s called ‘fraud’.
So if the truth is good enough to justify the cost…. they wouldn’t need to lie. But since the truth isn’t good enough then lie they must…. got it.
Maybe we should exaggerate their funding, too. Promise one million, pay 1000.
Brad Keyes is a double plagarist. The first paragraph is Stephen Scheider’s famous quote.
The second is a reply from MONIKA KOPACZ, in a reply to Dyson, in the NY Times.
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/04/12/magazine/12letters-t-THECIVILHERE_LETTERS.html
Being generous, I suspect he is a climate skeptic, and was bolstering the first reply, albeit without attribution.
In the name of ‘the cause’ all things are justified, don’t you know their ‘saving the planet ‘
@Kaboom 11:52.
Close, promise them millions then sent them a bill for same amount and taxes.
You folks who are extending that criticism to all scientists in all of the academe are preparing to throw the baby out with the bathwater.
There isn’t an iota of doubt that academic science — physics, chemistry, biology, geology, and all the engineering departments — have sparked the prosperity we all enjoy. That can only mean the science and engineering produced in academic departments is mostly correct and constructive.
I’ve been an academic staff scientist almost my entire adult life. Whatever their personal foibles — and they’ve got’em — academic science faculty are deadly serious about their science. Often, they have to kite their best science on the money dedicated to the winds of funding-fashion that blow out of DC. It’s very hard theses days, for example, to get a program dedicated to basic science funded. Some current DC fashion statements are “nano-technology,” “catalysis,” and “femtosecond.” Mix that all together, and you’re in the zone.
I’m presently at Stanford, and anyone who pays attention knows that Silicon Valley owes a huge debt of science and engineering to this university. All of our high-tech companies look to new hires coming out of our universities to import the latest techniques and understanding.
There just isn’t a better route to progress than curiosity-driven research. Corporations won’t fund that. Neither will most foundations (they all want to improve someone’s lot). It takes funded government agencies that employ ethical forward-looking scientists as grant reviewers. And it requires Congress to keep their micro-managing hands off. Most of the problems in academic science occurs because that last sentence is not followed. It’s mostly Congress and its imposed funding directives that politicizes academic science.
It is an easy but fatal step to extrapolate from the slough of climate science and the incompetence of the institutional leadership (NAS, APS, etc.) to all of academic science. Plenty of those scientists have spoken out against the corruption and foolishness. They’ve just been ignored.
Keep your wits about you. Emotion-laden attacks are what got us in this mess. Let’s not go from emotional scatter-gunning from the AGW crowd to emotional scatter-gunning in reaction.
The idea is to save science. Not to wreck it from the opposite direction.
Brad has, shall we say, a very dry sense of humour and I’ll eat my hat if he’s being anything other than sarcastic. I don’t think he does sarc tags though.
To think he’s a rabid alarmist would be somewhat off target but I’ll marinade an old boater just in case he’s on the turn.
Roy: Yes, that was my take as well (see above).
But he still should have attributed those quotes.
Pat Frank says:
January 21, 2014 at 12:25 pm
“You folks who are extending that criticism to all scientists in all of the academe are preparing to throw the baby out with the bathwater.
There isn’t an iota of doubt that academic science — physics, chemistry, biology, geology, and all the engineering departments — have sparked the prosperity we all enjoy. That can only mean the science and engineering produced in academic departments is mostly correct and constructive.”
Nope. 90% of it might be crap; the remaining 10% might still be enough to produce useful products. “mostly correct” is therefore incorrect.
BTW, how do you know by how much we have been held back already by stagnant physics? Granted, we have mountains of Black Hole conjecture but… wait, did I say 90%? well… maybe it goes into saturation lately.
Frank although your concerns of all science being tarred by the same brush as climate ‘science’ is fair , They only have themselves to far to many played the three wise monkeys , and saw nothing , heard nothing and worse said nothing when awful ‘scientific’ practice was openly being used to further personal and political objectives . While others decided AGW was a gravy train of funding they too wanted to ride on.
While I think your right and it may even be that some support ‘the cause ‘ not because they believe but because they fear what happens for all science when it falls , its far to late now for remorse and for that we may all end paying the price and ironical no more than those that work in the environmental area outside of ‘the cause ‘
” So, yes, climate scientists might exaggerate, but in today’s world, this is the only way to assure any political action and thus more federal financing to reduce the scientific uncertainty.””
And it works splendidly: The IPCC increased the certainty from 70% to 95% from AR4 to AR5!
Next they’ll increase it to 97%, just give them more billions!
Personally I think they should all be transported to a barren island to found their own civilisation. I used to suggest they should be given tables to wait; but I was too soft on them.
DirkH says:
January 21, 2014 at 12:59 pm
Nope. 90% of it might be crap; the remaining 10% might still be enough to produce useful products.
Inre: Scientism
From Austin L Hughes
Giving Credit Where It’s Not Due
In his enthusiasm for science, Pinker credits science with everything about the modern world that he finds good: “The numbers show that after millennia of near-universal poverty, a steadily growing proportion of humanity is surviving the first year of life, going to school, voting in democracies, living in peace, communicating on cell phones, enjoying small luxuries, and surviving to old age.” It is hard to see how science is responsible for all of these benefits, other than those directly related to health and technology. As regards public education, peace, and democracy, the causal relationship is likely the reverse of what Pinker assumes. A peaceful and democratic political order and a literate populace create the conditions under which science can develop, rather than being consequences of science.”
Re: “… only sensational exaggeration makes the kind of story that will get … readers’—attention.”
KAPOW! #(:))
Most publishers are NOT true believers — they are hardboiled cynics. They just want to make a buck. And that is, so far as it goes, a good thing. Unlike a true believer who will do ANY-thing to promote “the cause,” making them both the greatest dupes of and greatest menaces to society, the publishers will drop it in a minute if there isn’t any money in it. And, once the truth is out, no more “straight” newspapers will be trumpeting: Giant Crocodile Found in Basement of City Hall. The wild-eyed “do-gooders” are the ones to marginalize; they are the main tools of the power-hungry and of the greedy. The Bolsheviks and the Che Guevarites and the (you name it) Socialists use such people all the time. And, ultimately, they enforce their coerced charity at the end of the barrel of a gun.
Here’s a fun example from 1835…
The Great Lunar Hoax
“{In 1835}, the readers of The New York Sun were filled with an excitement that speedily became world-wide at the news of Sir John Herschel’s astronomical discoveries recently made {using} his giant telescope at the Cape of Good Hope. … claiming {to quote the} Edinburgh Journal of Science:
{quoting from Roger Lancelyn Green’s book, Into Other Worlds}
The Sun went on to report that … Herschel had discovered … life on the Moon… .
Herschel {since he was a genuine scientist} was not part of the hoax.
Its author was Richard Adams, a journalist. His “scoop” made a fortune for the Sun.
{Source: fn 176 of C. S. Lewis Collected Letters, vol. 3, pp. 898-9 (2007)}
At least the only goal there was to sell papers. Not to take over the economies of the world.
Al Gore made a similar statement in a Grist interview about the need to exaggerate the danger. What these brilliant protectors of the earth do not comprehend is that once they admit they are exaggerating, all future statements by them are useless, because it’s not possible to know when, if ever, they are telling the truth.
They lie to get attention, then wonder why their message is not being accepted after their lies are found out?
What very strange people. Try truth, it works better.
Oh, so the truth is there has been no warming for 17 years, the Sun and oceans caused most of the temperature rise last century and if we ever mention this we’ll lose out jobs. Ah I understand now.
Janice Moore says:
“Here’s a fun example from 1835…
The Great Lunar Hoax”
You should have added that this gave rise to the term “Moonbat”, which is today the name of a legendarily crazy (*) Guardian writer.
(*) exhibit A
http://www.monbiot.com/2005/03/22/god-of-the-soil/
“…I believe it is appropriate to have an over-representation of factual presentations on how dangerous [global warming] is, as a predicate for opening up the audience to listen to what the solutions are…”
-algore
from Grist magazine interview
10 May 2006
Thanks for the constructive criticism, Dirk H.. Your wit is super, but, I couldn’t have added that pun for it never occurred to me.
btw: LOVE the send them to a deserted island idea; why not Siberia (it is essentially a “barren island”), to the Gulag Archipelago which their grand old man upon whose birthday they worship the Earth, Sta1in, made so popular, heh… . Hm.
Exagerating for the greater good is liking drinking heavily for your enjoyment. It works for a while, but then the cyncism hangover sets in. The public can only be duped for a short while.
Great quote, Mark (and your two cats, too)!
Quite the contrary. Whoever in Academia claims her research is useful, should be defunded immediately. Scientists are supposed to go for truth and nothing but. And truth is utterly useless. Beyond the fact, of course, that the entire modern world is based on spinoffs of this very quest. This is why it is a good idea to throw taxpayer’s money into the bottomless pit of science, but only if scientists are doing their job and keep a safe distance from an utilitarian mindset.
When in the year 1888 Friedrich Reinitzer observed that cholesteryl benzoate had two distinct melting points and on his request Otto Lehmann found it was in a crystalline albeit liquid state between them, they certainly did not have either mobile phones or LCD displays in mind, but were deeply interested in how Nature actually works.
Janice Moore says:
January 21, 2014 at 1:26 pm
“Thanks for the constructive criticism, Dirk H.. Your wit is super, but, I couldn’t have added that pun for it never occurred to me.”
Contemporary illustrations:
http://www.der-orion.com/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=416:mondsig&catid=25:die-andere-seite&Itemid=43
Thanks for sharing that great link (at 2:29pm today), Dirk. LOL, so thaaaat’s what Herschel saw through his telescope. Heh, heh, looks more like (given it was 1835) he had it aimed at downtown Paris, France.
(btw: I still, from time to time, chuckle at your “light years of letters ago” — perfect — riposte to that blah, blah, blah, guy — good one.
You are a fine commenter. In the words of a German advertising slogan I often saw in Munich in 1986, “Gut…. besser….. {Dirk}!” (hope I spelled that correctly))
Quite so.
http://blogs.news.com.au/dailytelegraph/timblair/index.php/dailytelegraph/comments/quite_so/
Corruption by noble cause.
Neil Young, David Suzuki, Al Gore. Greenpeace’s anti-GMO stance against Golden Rice.
For the greater good, all is acceptable.
Janice Moore says:
January 21, 2014 at 2:42 pm
“You are a fine commenter. In the words of a German advertising slogan I often saw in Munich in 1986, “Gut…. besser….. {Dirk}!” (hope I spelled that correctly))”
You did. And I have to return the compliment. Always good fun talking to you.
“Meanwhile, climate change modelling suggests the number and severity of natural disasters is set to increase. Completed last December, one of the recommendations is for a boost in meteorologist numbers.
http://www.theage.com.au/environment/weather/forecasters-face-heavy-weather-20120608-201py.html
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😎
Nothing like a financial collapse to get the sheople’s attention. Then promise them “green pastures” and they’ll follow.
(I have a different Shepherd.)
Me, too, Gunga Din. #(:))
And His promises are never illusory.
Dirk!
That is so cool. I thought you could not care less what I said! You are welcome for the compliment and danke shoen for “talking” to me. LOL, I think that the blah, blah, blah, guy DID swallow a telephone book (I can’t recall his name and I don’t want to).
Sleep well, dear German ally,
Janice
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Many come up with something that is of value because it is of use to the user,
The problem is when the only thing they come up with are words that are of use to the user of the used…and they are willing to pay for those words. (Using taxpayer money, of course.)
Re: Mike Maguire says: January 21, 2014 at 3:14 pm
Way to shout it out, Mr. Maguire. No, you weren’t obnoxiously “loud,” lol, I’m just recalling how you were (ARE, no doubt, heh) not afraid to speak out boldly for the truth IN PUBLIC and admiring that about you. Keep it up! (smile)
Yup. For those pitiful climastrologists… ‘s rainin’ aaaaall the ti-himmmmme. They are NO DOUBT, singin’ the blues these days, and “HA, HA, HA, HAAAAAA,” I say.
#(:))
“Stormy Weather” — Billie Holiday
(yes, not “science,” but, taking a break to listen to some good music can help one keep on keepin’ on in the marathon-of-knowledge that is WUWT, I think, thus, it actually promotes science…)
Yeah, just keep on crying, you climate losers. Get used to it.
Before too many more years go by, you (unless you stop being a vassal to the Father of L1es….) are going to be crying for a looooong time.
Microsoft has a pure science research arm with a multi-billion dollar budget. Did you know that 2 years ago they developed a contact lens that monitors blood sugar without needles:
http://research.microsoft.com/en-us/collaboration/stories/functionalcontactlens.aspx
Your comments deserves far more analysis than I have time for but simply, Individuals and businesses outside of academia have produced extremely large quantities of science, and if they hadn’t had large quantities of their wealth creation taxed away, they probably would have produced much more.
“… and if they hadn’t had large quantities of their wealth creation taxed away, they probably would have produced much more.” (Gary Mount at 4:14pm today) Great example.
Oh, there is no DOUBT about that. Much more.
Socialism is a disease (for every 1 government job it “creates,” 2 private sector jobs are prevented from coming into being — just ask Dr. Walter E. Williams if you don’t believe me.)
Churchill had it right (quoting from memory only): “Capitalism is the unequal sharing of blessings. Socialism is the equal sharing of misery.”
All boats rise with the tide of economic prosperity.
Corporations won’t fund research?!!
To find out the truth, Pat, do a little research into the R & D budgets of major corporations. Just a little ignorant of the business world, there. Did GE and Boeing and Procter & Gamble and Bausch & Lomb and Pfizer and … on and on and on … suddenly reorganize as partnerships or sole proprietorships?
Also, if the research is not basic science, but, applied science, so what? You and everyone out there with some wealth are free to get organized and invest together in whatever basic science endeavor you like. And many private (no coerced funds from taxpayers are required) foundations and trusts are doing just that.
Oh, and btw:
George Washington Carver and Thomas Alva Edison and the Wright Bros. and Henry Ford and Letourneau (forgot his first name) and Steve Jobs and Bill Gates (and lots of others that we could name) were not taxpayer-funded.
Pat Frank said @ January 21, 2014 at 12:25 pm
I’d like to second what Pat wrote.
For those of you criticising scientists for not speaking out, I happen to know a few who wish they could. Unfortunately, they have contracts specifically preventing them from making unauthorised statements to the general public. IOW, they abide by the rules of the game.
Of course they could speak out and hence be summarily dismissed from their position. IOW, they would no longer be able to work in science (whistleblowers usually find it hard to gain employment in their chosen field), so there would be less useful science being undertaken. Additionally, you are demanding that they probably take a a hefty pay-cut. And scientists are not particularly well-paid. That’s why the “best and brightest” compete for academic training as doctors, lawyers, accountants and possibly even documentary film-makers and telephone santisers.
Janice Moore says:
January 21, 2014 at 4:33 pm
Actually G. W. Carver was tax-supported. along with private philanthropy.
garymount said @ January 21, 2014 at 4:14 pm
That’s research with an end in mind, also known as applied science, aka engineering. Nothing wrong with that, but it’s not the kind of research Pat was referring to. So called pure research is entirely driven by curiosity. The practical benefits that flow from this kind of research often occur after, sometimes long after, the researcher has died.
Janice Moore said @ January 21, 2014 at 4:33 pm
George Washington Carver spent a considerable portion of his career working at government funded Agricultural Experiment Stations. What evidence do you have that the US Government funded these through private means, rather than taxpayer revenue?
Pat Frank says: @ January 21, 2014 at 12:25 pm
You folks who are extending that criticism to all scientists in all of the academe are preparing to throw the baby out with the bathwater….
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
Pat Frank, academic science brought this anger upon themselves.
Where were the university and industry scientists when the Royal Society, American Chemical Society, Physics, …. ALL came out supporting CAGW? Where was the uproar from scientists about having their good name usurped for a G..D D…M HOAX?
I will tell you where they were. Most were busy trying to find an ‘Angle’ that would get them some of that grant money thats where.
Now we have people DYING, 65M Europeans live in fuel poverty, which is associated with more than 30,000 excess winter deaths in Europe per year. And Obama wants to visit that same horror on Americans.
As far as I am concerned every single dollar of that grant money is covered in blood and it wipes off on you. Every single one of you who takes a dollar instead of standing up against this hoax deserves to be condemned a long with the universities who are also supporting the hoax.
Please note I have been fired three times during my career as a chemist because I refused to lie especially when it came to other people’s safety. Too bad most other scientists rather grab grant money while throwing stones at the few brave souls willing to stand up instead of supporting them.
So yes, I stand by what I said. If you are not adult enough to be trusted with tax payer money then you deserve to have that money yanked away from you. The good work done by past scientists in no way excuses the present dishonest bunch.
The Pompous Git says:
January 21, 2014 at 4:55 pm
Tuskegee Institute (now University) is a largely privately funded institution. The Alabama Extension Service is now mainly tax- & government fee-funded, but early on benefited from private philanthropy, as in its Jesup Wagons.
But you´re right that Carver also enjoyed some public (state & federal) support, early in his career at Iowa State & to some extent at Tuskegee.
@ Milodonharlani
I seem to recall Carver having contretemps on more than one occasion with Washington over what he was doing with funds he had been given. I don’t have the relevant documentation to hand, nor the will to go looking over the Internet. I believe that the Washington referred to was the government, rather than his good self. But you never know… 😉
Janice Moore says:
January 21, 2014 at 1:26 pm
… LOVE the send them to a deserted island idea; why not Siberia…
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
Nah, make it Antarctica since they think it is melting. Shackleton already proved you can live there.
After all we just had this comment on another thread.
Gail Combs said @ January 21, 2014 at 5:09 pm
Can’t disagree with that. But just because there are bad apples in the barrel, does not mean they are all bad. You appear to be telling us that you are a “good” apple, and I’m more than willing to take you at your word given the many words of yours that I have read here. I suspect that there are in fact many more since I know some of them, though as I said above, they are somewhat constrained.
garymount says: @ January 21, 2014 at 4:14 pm
…but simply, Individuals and businesses outside of academia have produced extremely large quantities of science, and if they hadn’t had large quantities of their wealth creation taxed away, they probably would have produced much more.
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
Thanks for saying that. You are correct. I always worked in industry and all the companies I worked for did R&D.
The Pompous Git says:
I am always reminded in situations like this of what Edmund Burke said: “All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing. Do not allow evil to triumph.”
We are the ones who have to get up and look ourselves in the face and decide if we can live with blood on our hands. In one case several people were killed by the company I got fired from. In the other two cases people were severely injured. In all three cases the companies were entirely responsible and managed to wiggle out of it.
@ Gail Combes & garymount. Do you think private industry R & D would have developed nuclear power without the theoretical foundations provided by Marie Curie, Albert Einstein, Ernest Rutherford, Richard Feynman, Neils Bohr etc? Or, put another way, do you believe the many fine theoreticians in physics set out with developing a nuclear industry in mind?
@ Gail Combes
As I said above; I am in broad agreement with you. And it is certain that each of us must face our own dilemmas and act according to personal belief. I also know the personal cost of going against the tide and it was high. Fortunately, I was already close to the end of my working life and could afford to tell clients I was directly ordered to lie to: “same shit, different toilet”.
I cannot sit in judgement of others when I know that I have had feet of clay in the past.
Janice Moore says:
January 21, 2014 at 1:27 pm
Great quote, Mark (and your two cats, too)!
————–
TY Janice! They’re the ones who put me onto that quote.
Cats are big time skeptics; dogs, not so much. Heck even Anthony’s pooch is a member of the Soviet Union of Consarned Scientists.
Thanks for informing me about George W. Carver, milodonharlani (whatever your real name is) and Pompous (glad you are back again, even if you strain out a gnat but swallow a camel, sigh). I hope the farming has been going very well for you.
Taxpayer funding of science is not necessary for the advancement of knowledge. You have not disproven my point by eliminating one of my pieces of evidence for it. People are free to fund universities with their private money to fund basic science — and they DO. And, in a democratic republic, the governed may consent to fund it. And that is fine. The fact remains, however, that basic science can happen without taxpayer funding.
State funding makes science vulnerable to ideologues and tyrants — let’s keep it beyond their reach as much as possible. HOW IN THE WORLD DO YOU THINK CLIMATE “SCIENCE” GOT INTO THE STATE IT IS IN if not for gov’t. control (money = control (always))?
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@ Gail — lol, you are right! Antarctica (or the Arctic) would be even better! Good one. And, thank you, so much, for all your EXCELLENT research that you share, day in, day out. As I said to Jimbo earlier today, Don’t stop. We need reminding and there are new readers all the time. You are a one-woman warrior for truth — you go, girl! (hope that cold is better — ugh, sometimes, they seem to last forever)
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@ Mark (and cats) — You’re welcome. Grrrr (with a smile), you don’t know dogs very well, I think. ALL dogs are 100% devoted to the TRRRRRRRUUUUTH (that’s how my German Shepherd says it, lol). It is cats who are sneaky and cynical and may …. or may not…. you just never can tell, can you….. support any side in particular…. cats, being narcissists, are looking for what’s in it for them… (they equate to the Enviro-profiteers or to publishers of sensational stuff they know to be junk science). Dogs are loving and faithful and try to please you and are very honest and…. AND I JUST LOVE DOGS. Okay, okay, I realize that you think cats are super-neat (and, no doubt, they would agree with you, lol) and we’ll just have to agree to disagree (and that is fine, (smile)). At any rate, you and I don’t need to fight like them, do we? (smile) We do agree on this: truth rocks!
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This isn’t directed at Git, but when there is a standard we are reaching for we aren’t upholding it by giving others a pass just because we ourselves have fallen short of it at times. We can have empathy for those who, like us, have fallen short of it but we don’t lower the standard to whatever level we’ve personally reached. Sometimes “Do as I say not as I do” (or did) has some wisdom behind it.
<a href="http://wattsupwiththat.com/2014/01/21/quote-of-the-week-sensationalizing-for-the-greater-good/#comment-1543702"DirkH, thinking that most of academic science is “crap” in the face of the tidal wave of knowledge and technology that has surged out of those labs since 1950 is to live in Never-Never Land.
Physics is no more stagnant now than it was between Newton and Maxwell (~200 years) or between Maxwell and Niels Bohr (~80 years). Your impatience just shows a lack of perspective.
Zeke, Austin Hughes is wrong. “Public education, peace, and democracy” all come directly from the Enlightenment. The Enlightenment and its rationalist philosophies gained credibility only because of the successes of science since the time of Newton.
Science developed in societies plagued with absolutist monarchies and religious strife. Supposing that, “A peaceful and democratic political order and a literate populace create the conditions under which science can develop” is exactly backwards from how science actually developed.
Science certainly needs those things to prosper. And we know that tyranny and oppression, aimed at science, will destroy science. But that’s hardly worthy of cosmically inverted philosophizing, is it.
Janice Moore said @ January 21, 2014 at 7:13 pm
I can only speak here whereof I know, so it is confined to the Land of Under. It is true that private corporations/individuals provide funding to our universities. Indeed, it is a major objective these days for the universities to pursue such. The funding in every instance I know is decidedly not for fundamental research, but tied to providing marketable results. A scientist funded under such an arrangement would be in violation of contract were he, or she, to engage in fundamental research.
This state of affairs causes much anguish in academe and is a very common topic of conversation. I have no beef with this, but it does seem the academics have a point when they can show that this applied research is very much at the expense of fundamental/theoretical research.
While it is certainly true that the captains of industry could fund fundamental research, they do not. There are two major reasons why this is so. The first is that it would be perceived as against the interests of the shareholders since there is no profit to be had in either the short, or medium term. The second is illustrated by a conversation between a captain of industry and one who was attempting to interest him in something new. Captain of Industry said: “What I want are new ideas, but they must have been thoroughly tested.” He was completely unaware that his demand was a contradiction in terms. New ideas are by definition untested.
Finally, my now deceased younger brother was an excellent theoretician and gained his first degree in mathematics only to discover that you have to be very lucky indeed to gain funding for theoretical research. And none of that funding came from private industry. Upon gaining his second degree in engineering, he immediately found gainful employment, but theoretical research, his first love, was never anything but a private hobby for him.
Apropos the farm. We shall be putting it up for sale. Sadly, I am now too arthritic to put in the many long hours needed to keep it functioning as it should. The upside is that even though I will become a “townie”, I will be able to build another house, albeit with lotsa help 🙂
@ Gunga Din
The problem here is we are not in the shoes of the potential whistleblower. Observing whistleblowers it is obvious that they convert most, if not all of their wealth into income-for-lawyers. If they are lucky, they remain married to a loyal spouse, but there’s never any guarantee that’s going to happen. My GP who has some firsthand experience in this area tells me that depression and ill-health frequently accompany the loss of wealth, family and prestige. It’s a hard ask…
garymount, you’re supposing that corporations left to themselves would invest huge sums into R&D. In the past, corporations left to themselves, invested time in building monopolies to remove competition and maximize profit. Why wouldn’t they do that again?
Part of the reason corporations invest in R&D now, is that R&D is mostly independent of the corporate purse – most of it runs on tax money. That has made the environment very competitive, because new products and methods emerge all the time from academic labs. Corporations *must* invest in some R&D just to keep up. If they don’t take advantage of new ideas and technologies, someone else will and put them out of business. Remove the impetus, and they’ll settle down and make insider arrangements with one another to remove that scary competition and rake in the easy money. And why not? Does anyone think business runs on altruism?
I’m reading Joyce Appleby’s “A History of Capitalism: the relentless revolution” Exactly that sort of thing – competition-suppressing monopolies — arose whenever the economic environment permitted them.
Pat Frank says: January 21, 2014 at 12:25 pm
You folks who are extending that criticism to all scientists in all of the academe are preparing to throw the baby out with the bathwater.
Well said Pat Franks.
We perhaps become a little narrowly focused in here. I note from some comments in here that some seem to consider that the only science being done in the world is CAGW scare related.
We owe a lot to science. Of any source of funding or motivation. Just a bit of wheat/chaff sorting required. (You’d think there’d be a machine for that by now).
Gail, I understand your anger, sympathze with it, and feel it myself. But I’ve now published three peer-reviewed papers extremely critical of AGW so-called science, have two more under active review, and am planning two more after that.
I also presented a *very critical* poster on climate models at the Fall meeting of the AGU in San Francisco, last December.
As you know, I’ve also had several long analytical posts here on WUWT and several more on Jeffid’s tAV, all of them also extremely critical of AGW so-called science.
All of that has been done on my own time and at my own expense (about 3000 $ by now). So don’t talk about wiping anything on me.
During my work on the air temperature record, I read about Kenneth Hubbard and Xiaomao Lin, University of Nebraska, who work on the accuracy of air temperature sensors, joining forces with Roger Pielke Sr., trying to convey to Congress how chancy is the air temperature record. They got nowhere.
I can’t say why people like Michael Mann, Kevin Trenberth, Tom Karl (NCDC), Ralph Cicerone (NAS), and others have subverted science. I certainly don’t understand how they’ve managed to sweep the officers of the APS and others so easily before them.
But don’t you go tarring all of academic scientists by saying no one has spoken up. They have done. They’ve testified before Congress. They’ve pubished papers. They’ve had their characters smeared. Want first-hand testimony? Contact Willie Soon or Sallie Baliunas. Witness what happened to Frederick Seitz when he spoke out about Ben Santer’s lies in the 2AR. He was viciously attacked and nothing came of his protest.
I’ll repeat my point: if you folks wreck academic science just to get even with these intellectual thugs, you’ll be punishing the innocent, sowing ignorance, and greasing the skids for exactly the luddite politics-of-emotion society you all want to avoid.
[Thank you for your work. Mod]
===============================================================
Yes. That’s where the empathy comes in. Some can take a stand and weather the storm. Some know they couldn’t weather it so don’t stand. I can have empathy for them. But what is right and wrong is still what is right and wrong.
(“They” can be wise in how they take their stand. We owe much to “Mr. FOIA” but few, if any, know who he or she is.)
========================================================================
We need a rifle, not a shotgun. (For those of you who hate guns, feel free to substitute “scalpel” and “sledgehammer”.)
What is wrong is when research is funded to come to or support a predetermined result determined by the funder. Real life doesn’t profit from wrong results. But politics can.
That’s what “Gail et al.” (and me, and I suspect you) are riled about.)
Janice Moore said:
January 21, 2014 at 7:13 pm
@ Mark (and cats) — You’re welcome. Grrrr (with a smile), you don’t know dogs very well, I think. ALL dogs are 100% devoted to the TRRRRRRRUUUUTH (that’s how my German Shepherd says it, lol).
——————————
I guess that the knowledge of Kenji’s membership in a warmunist organisation temporarily influenced my judgement and led me to disparage the doggies.
My apologies to you Janice and to your pup 🙂
Mod thanks Pat Frank for his work. The Git raises a glass to you both — and not just because it’s beer o’clock 🙂
Oh, dear Pompous Git,
When I read “{Regarding} the farm. We shall be putting it up for sale,” my heart sank. My dad and his siblings are doing that right now. It hasn’t been a working farm for a long time, but, “the farm” (still call it that) has been in the family for 4 generations. That you are not leaving entirely by your own choice, that circumstances are forcing you to leave must break your heart. No matter what country they are from: farmers love their land. That your hands have been working that land right up until the end is going to make that last drive out the driveway so hard. I am dreading that day and I’m not even a farmer.
As you wisely say, though, a new chapter with new joys lies ahead of you. We at WUWT will certainly benefit — you’ll have more time to post!
Weeping with you and your wife,
Janice
@ Janice Moore
Weep not dear lady. I am leaving in time to establish a brand new garden and thoroughly document it for another book. I am actually more relieved than saddened. Truth is, we move not very far and remain close to our friends. What has saddened me is seeing parts of the farm fall into neglect, though this is the most difficult season since 1983 and not just the arthritis to blame.
We recently celebrated the passing of my friend Tony Moore, though celebrated is possibly the wrong word here. As per Tony’s request, the final piece of music was “Always Look on the Bright Side of Life” and his wife and daughter commenced dancing to that jolly tune. Some attempted to stop them dancing. I suspect that some people seek misery, rather than joy.
Live long and prosper.
As the poster of the “astonishing statement,” I have been distressed, disturbed and demoralised by a tattoo of remarkably closely-synchronised assaults on my integrity launched from the direction of the flat-earthosphere. Obviously I can’t even begin to put myself in the shoes of a world-leading researcher like Dr Michael Mann, but I now know exactly how he felt in the darkest hour of his own Garden of Gethsemane*: hounded by politicians crowing over every typo, dogged by deniers baying for blood, ratted out by soi-disant “colleagues” and and mobbed by the bleating, myth-parroting mouthpieces of the Murdocracy (or should I say HERDocracy).
I’ve always gone out of my way to display patience and tolerance for folks who voice doubts, misconceptions and incomplete knowledge regarding climate change, even if their questions have been soundly debunked and/or dismissed by scientists, provided (of course) that their difference of opinion is a matter of sincere ignorance; but it seems it was naive of me to hope for your folks’ respect in return!
To those who have described my comment as “plagiarism” (a mastertrope of dog-whistling, ad hominem and Islamophobia obviously intended to liken me to Edward Wegman’s “foreign,” “non-American,” “A-rab!!!” grad student):
Paranoid much? Think “Skeptically” for a second. If I were stealing statements from climate scientists then how, pray tell, could I have obtained sentences like:
“THEY are not just scientists but human beings as well. And like most people THEY’D like to see the world a better place… So THEY have to offer up scary scenarios, make simplified, dramatic statements, and make little mention of any doubts THEY might have.”
Notice how I refer to climate scientists in the 3RD PERSON? Are you seriously suggesting these are Steve Schneider’s expressions? LOL—OK, riiiight. How anybody could be familiar with the Professor’s lectures and writings on the planetary climate crisis without noticing his favoritism towards the 1st person is beyond me. Even for climate-debate standards, that would be tone-deaf.
The passage you thought you recognized was, in fact, a PARAPHRASE of the climate-scientific ethics Schneider expounded so memorably in a wide-ranging Discovery interview.
Sure, it was that article which first opened my mind—and that of a whole generation of non-climate-scientist readers—to these ideas, but I’ve met literally dozens of climate consensualists who’d confirm and agree with Schneider’s principles, so it seems both supererogatory and arbitrary to demand I attribute them to the individual researcher who just happened to articulate them first/ best to a muggle audience.
We’re having a discussion (or Conversation) about the way **climate science** works (and how it differs from the public’s idealized, black-and-white caricature of science as “just the truth, ma’am”)—which didn’t die with the late great Professor Schneider!
This is something around which many misconceptions still exist—let’s raise some awareness. Imagine how much colder the planet would be if so-called Skeptics stopped being so negative and made constructive contributions?
Instead of impugning my entire life’s work (what’s next? rats on the doorstep? a burning cross on my lawn?), you folks could do some CLIMATE COMMUNICATION with the people who read The Conversation—most of whom, in my experience, still labor under the understandable misconception that climate scientists are pure, dispassionate, asexual truth-machines, who have seen the future and describe their observations. There’s still nowhere near enough appreciation (let alone sympathy) out there for the bewildering flowchart of moral dilemmas, compromises and pitfalls scientists began to encounter (starting about 25 years ago) when determining how, what, to whom and what not to communicate.
Yours in defending the science,
Brad
* Speaking of trials, it seems someone upthread has had the audacity to take a soundbite from the Bible completely out of context and imply that it is somehow incompatible with Schneiderian/Mullerian/Kopaczian climate ethics:
“Why not say–as some slanderously claim that we say–”Let us do evil that good may result”? Their condemnation is just!”
Pure disinformation. While technically this is an accurate statement by God (or his Greek interpreter), my critic disingenuously fails to mention that it does NOT come from a climate scientist. In fact Christ and his apostles hadn’t even heard of the work of Arrhenius, so their ethical code, while admirable for the time, was obviously unable to take into account the seriousness of the apocalypse now facing us (if one believes the IPCC’s revelations)—and it is grossly dishonest to insinuate (by omission) that two millennia of advancements and rethinks in ethics, most dramatically in the last two decades, never occurred!
Thanks, Mark, that wasn’t necessary, but, thank you. I’ll be sure to tell Riley (sound asleep right now on “his” (my, actually) bed — that is NOT where he will spend the night, though, no matter HOW well he does his “pitiful lost puppy” look), he wanted to give the computer a nose-thump (German Shepherds do that when they are adamant about anything, e.g., DROP THE BALL!). While cats are not my favorite creatures, you have proven, once again, that cat owners are often extraordinarily sweet people (takes that to put up with… oh, never mind, SMILE).
And please tell your cats from me that they are beautiful and graceful and have the softest fur (that should make them purr). If they ask, “How did she know that?” just tell them, “Well, how could she not?” And that is the truth (given what virtually all cats are like).
Thanks for being so kind. You are a refreshing antidote to the colder, meaner, people one encounters from time to time, here. (Fortunately, they are the in the minority of commenters.)
Janice
Pompous G, I have arthritis as well, diagnosed at 19. If you write to me at pfrank_eight_three_zero_AT_earth_link_dot_net, I’ll send you an essay about how I’ve learned to live pretty much without pain or inflammation.
I didn’t learn it early enough to stop a good deal of the joint damage (fused back & neck), but I’d guess you understand how wonderful a day without pain is. Most – nearly all – of mine are like that now.
Let me congratulate on your excellent sarchasm in your long gospel of religious dogmatism. (That gaping whole between a liberal-socialist and reality.)
@ Pat Frank
Thank you for your kind offer; I will take you up on it. In the meantime, I already take glucosamine and am one of the lucky 40% that obtains considerable relief from that. These days it’s supplemented by a slow-release anti-inflammatory that works well without Viox’s side-effects. Bad days I need oxycontin, but fortunately they are few. Mostly I only suffer if I exceed my physical limits. There is some really good info out there on coping with chronic pain and I expect yours will be up there with it 🙂
BTW, you beat me to it by six years 😉
@ Brad Keyes
You appear to have a reading/comprehension problem. There have been ever so many comments here that fall well outside your blanket condemnation. We “denialists” are a heterogeneous lot.
@ Brad Keyes
Since at least Biblical Times we have been told that we are going to Hell in a Handbasket and you appear to be one of the latest saying such. So far, we do not seem to have suffered that fate, I am mindful of one thing Jeshua the Nazarene said: “The kingdom of heaven is at hand”. I have always taken that to mean it’s here, and now. This world, this existence, is it. The best (only?) of all possible worlds if you will. And I’m enjoying it — to the utmost of my now failing abilities. Letting go gives us freedom, and only freedom brings inner happiness. Holding onto anger prevents any possibility of being free. Your choice…
Dear Pompous,
I’m glad to hear that you are coping with this enormous change so beautifully. That’s great about the garden and the book. I’ll be praying, though, for this move is, no matter how much good you can see in it, going to put a mighty big lump in your throat for awhile.
Thanks for sharing about Tony Moore. Maybe I’m related! I’d like to think I am, what a fine man to leave such a legacy of focusing on the positive. His wife and daughter were paying tribute to his noble spirit by dancing to celebrate such a life. That they could still dance, even with tears streaming down their faces, said, “Tony’s joyful spirit lives on in us.” Beautiful.
A tribute to your wonderfully positive friend, a delightful man, a dear friend, and a loving husband and dad, a song that captures “Tony”:
On the Sunny Side of the Street — Frank Sinatra
Take care,
Janice
@ Tony’s beloved:
It’s okay to dance while you’re weeping. Cherish the things he loved; it will keep him close. And later, when the second mourning comes, that is, the realization that the first, bitter, grief that held the memory of him so close to you, is fading away, let it go. Let the bittersweet tie of first grief fall away. Life goes on. And that is good. Live, really live, that is how you will honor Tony.
Dance.
Re: “the kingdom of heaven is at hand,” dear Pompous,… (ahem), just want to be sure you realize that most of us believers in Jeshua as our Messiah (first coming), i.e., as our Savior, read that phrase (given the context of the entire Bible), to mean that the Way into that kingdom, i.e., Jesus, (“I am the way, the truth, and the life, no one comes to the Father but by me.” John 14:6) was about to die and rise from the dead making a way to enter, i.e., to become a member of, that kingdom, by simply believing in Jeshua as savior. The old covenant of works according to the Law (which we could never perfectly do) was about to be replaced by the new covenant, by faith (in Christ) alone. Now, by faith alone we can have eternal life. By mere belief in Jeshua, we are forever citizens of “the kingdom.”
The “at hand,” thus, did not refer to a geographic location, but to the time being near for the new way into that kingdom to be made.
I realize that we disagree about this. I just wanted to be sure that you knew what mainstream teaching is, on this point.
And I sure won’t be talking anymore about it, here. #(:))
(if you want to discuss it, let me know and I’ll click on your Pompous Git link)
Dear Pat,
I’m sorry to read of your arthritis. You have been hiking with boulders in your backpack while the rest of us merrily skip up the trail with only our lunch in ours. You’ve learned to cope, but, I KNOW that isn’t always easy. Hang in there. And, even though we disagree, KEEP ON POSTING.
Take care,
Janice
Janice Moore says: @ January 21, 2014 at 7:13 pm
….Taxpayer funding of science is not necessary for the advancement of knowledge. You have not disproven my point by eliminating one of my pieces of evidence for it. People are free to fund universities with their private money to fund basic science — and they DO…..
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
And that Janice is the key!
People forget that once the government is involved, you just lost control of the money AND GOVERNMENT BUREAUCRATS TAKE A BIG BITE of that money.
Darn it I thought I closed those block quotes.
Gunga Din says: @ January 21, 2014 at 9:23 pm
…. What is wrong is when research is funded to come to or support a predetermined result determined by the funder. Real life doesn’t profit from wrong results. But politics can.
That’s what “Gail et al.” (and me, and I suspect you) are riled about.)
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
You are correct. We handed a credit card to a teenager (politicians) and he has bought lots of junk for him and his friends including the gun that all of them are now holding to our heads while he has left us poor.
We need to take that credit card away from him and take back control of our own money. We have had a hundred years trying it “Their Way” and we have a royal Charlie Foxtrot to show for it.
The
moneywealth does not “Go away” it just stays in the hands of those who own it and they can either reinvest and grow it or donate it or spend it.Pat Frank says: @ January 21, 2014 at 8:56 pm
Dr. Frank,
The “You” with blood on their hands are the people and universities who get grant money by adding the correct buzz words like “Global Warming” and “Sustainable” to their grant applications. Or the ones who just stay silent. The correct term for them is ENABLERS. You and a select few are not enablers (unfortunately you are way too few). However tax payers no longer have the option to fund the good guys and NOT FUND the others. That is the point of yanking government funding out from under the enablers and the parasites who are just warming a chair and producing Baffle gab.
Wealth per year is a fixed pie. I want control of most of my wealth but governments now take 60% -80% and I have no say in its use. Therefore how can I say my wealth should go to Dr. Curry and Dr. Linzen and you instead of Mikey Mann?
Your University IS an enabler and that is the collective you I was referring to. I am sorry I was not more clear.
Unfortunately my University is just as bad and I no longer claim it, recommend it or support it with funds.
The Pompous Git says:
January 21, 2014 at 5:18 pm
That was Booker T. Washington, President of the Tuskegee Institute, a well known figure in US history. Carver was not a good department administrator & didn’t want the job.
Brad Keyes: your first paragraph is NOT a paraphrase. Its almost verbatim. I can see only two words changed.
The second paragraph is a direct quote also, and also unattributed.
I will let the readers decide if you paraphrased.
Your “paraphrasing:”
On the one hand, scientists are ethically bound to the scientific method, in effect promising to tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but—which means that they must include all doubts, the caveats, the ifs, ands and buts. On the other hand, they are not just scientists but human beings as well. And like most people they’d like to see the world a better place, which in this context translates into working to reduce the risk of potentially disastrous climate change. To do that they need to get some broad based support, to capture the public’s imagination. That, of course, means getting loads of media coverage. So they have to offer up scary scenarios, make simplified, dramatic statements, and make little mention of any doubts they might have.
Schnieder’s Quote: http://stephenschneider.stanford.edu/Mediarology/Mediarology.html
On the one hand, as scientists we are ethically bound to the scientific method, in effect promising to tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but – which means that we must include all doubts, the caveats, the ifs, ands and buts. On the other hand, we are not just scientists but human beings as well. And like most people we’d like to see the world a better place, which in this context translates into our working to reduce the risk of potentially disastrous climate change. To do that we need to get some broad based support, to capture the public’s imagination. That, of course, means getting loads of media coverage. So we have to offer up scary scenarios, make simplified, dramatic statements, and make little mention of any doubts we might have.
With exception of two words changed, that I can see, they are identical.
You have plagarized two scientists.
Three words changed, that I can see.
WAY — TO — GO, Gail and Les!
Nice work.
@ The Pompous Git
You opine:
‘We “denialists” are a heterogeneous lot.’
[citation needed]
I’ve attended conferences about science denialism and its psychological and neurological etiology, and have read most mainstream books you’ve heard of on the problem of denialists, so (without being ungrateful that you shared your opinion!) I’m not entirely sure you’d be able to tell me more that I’m able to tell you. I think I’m obliged to be extra “skeptical” of your characterization of denialists in light of the fact that (no offense) you *are* one by your own admission—and this can’t help but color your testimony, no matter how honest you believe you’re being. I don’t mean to be dismissive of you, of course—just rigorous. It’s about conflict of interest. If you’re an intellectual you’ll be aware, for instance, that in a serious academic seminar one would never include a denialist on a panel about denialism; & you’d understand that a book about denialism would be considered less credible (and might not find as reputable a publisher) if the author were a denialist him/herself, &c. &c.
Back to your impression of “you” as a “heterogeneous lot,” you’re probably talking about a rather superfcial diversity. And that’d be correct: given that denialists make up ~50% of the population, they can obviously be found in all shapes and sizes (even if the majority do tend to be older [60+] white males).
But if you look beneath the surface, as I’ve been doing for many years in the climate debate, informed by a bit of pre-reading about how denialists think according to today’s best science, then you’ll be struck by a number of remarkable commonalities uniting the whole denialist half of the community, and having few exceptions. Here are the first few items:
Changed words in bold:
That’s nine changes AFAICT. Still plagiarism, though.
Pompous Git:
Yep, thanks. I should have done that more precisely, but I am time constrained.
0. Because denialists mostly identify with the far right in political/electoral terms, they tend to viscerally resent government in all its forms, and to believe that any new regulation is wrong, as a matter of principle.
(Miraculously, though, when it comes to the practice of science, these Sons of Anarcholiberty suddenly declare themselves in favor of principle, rules, protocols, and Method! Oh well… consistency is the last accusation I’d lay at the foot of the climate denialist movement.)
As a “logical” corollary of these unusual beliefs, therefore, denialists are none too thrilled to hear or read about problems (such as climate change) for which science tells us the only solution is to invest a single borderless, worldwide government with the power to recalibrate the industrial metabolisms of its various subject countries by legislating any necessary aspects of public and private life, and to transfer wealth between them as and when necessary to justly reflect the respective historical culpabilities of developed versus developing countries.
The denialist’s worried reaction to any and all scientific news that necessitates a centralised, supreme temporal and conscientious authority over humankind is one of the first oddities most people notice when trying to engage them; yet, as unnatural as their reaction may appear at first, it almost makes sense when one understands the political filters through which a denialist/rightist sees and parses every single thing in his/her world.
1. For some reason, which I won’t speculate on because I’ve got a couple of papers in the works, denialists seem to become impolite and pejorative the moment a science-supporter tries to engage them on the climate issue. Of course, it’s only a minority who crescendo to outright abuse as one pursues a scientific discussion with them. But even the best-mannered denier can’t help using pejorative terms like ‘warmist’, ‘Climatism’, ‘believer,’ ‘catastrophist/alarmist,’ ‘CAGW,’ in a (subconscious?) bid to irrationalize, emotionalize and delegitimize the advocate and thus the advocacy of science. The sentence-by-sentence lexical bullying is rounded off by the denier’s hijacking of the word ‘skeptic’ for him- or herself, further insinuating that pro-science people are somehow incapable of critical thought.
At this point, many well-meaning ambassadors of science will and do simply give up, sapped and demoralized by the slow but steady verbal attrition of their dignity—which is usually the point. Another victory for the science-undermining industry.
Where does my high threshold for denier rhetoric come from? Simple. I go in with low expectations. I don’t expect the denier to accede to the kind of neutral, accurate and objective language we intellectuals would prefer (“science advocacy / pro-science / science-acceptance / science belief” vs “science rejection / science denial / science dismissal”)—I expect that my attempt to convey science will be met with knives. That way, if it just turns into a fist-fight and not a knife-fight, it’s a nice surprise and a good day for science evangelism!
2. Denialists don’t tend to be scientists. (At my most generous estimate, only 5% of denialists in the population are qualified, paid scientists.) And even when they do have a science PhD, their expertise usually turns out to be in a completely unrelated field. More often than not it’s one of those fields climate scientists think of as a bit undemanding, soft or relatively irrelevant to the problem science is trying to solve.
3. Denialists tend to subscribe to what we jocularly call in the common room ‘Methodism.’ (Yet they don’t so much as blush at their own hypocrisy when slandering the other side as ‘a religion’!! LOL).
That is, they insist on the reality of a naive, 7th-grade abstraction called “The [Modern] Scientific Method,” which is purported to have or be defined by certain “rules” saying what you can/can’t do in science.
What’s rather suggestive is how, 9 times out of 10, these “rules” just happen to say you can’t do the thing Phil Jones, Michael Mann, Peter Gleick, David Karoly, an IPCC lead author or some other science-endorsing scientist did. Very rarely does a researcher who doesn’t believe in science, like Richard Lindzen, seem to fall afoul of these “rules of science.” I’m not suspicious by nature, but I’d find it easier to believe so-called rules existed in science if they didn’t seem to be so…. welll…. systematically biased against the conduct of science-believing scientists, and hardly ever in conflict with the conduct of the science-denying scientists!
I’ve discovered on Twitter that the Methodist faith is alive and well and persists no matter how many times I ask the denialist, and they fail, to tweet me a complete list of these alleged rules. Most denialists don’t even try to answer this challenge. The more creative excuses for running away from it include: “this is a subtle topic,” “this is a complex topic,” “the rules took millennia to develop & if u expect me2 impart them2u by twitter then u don’t know the 1st thing abt science,” “go read [such and such a philosopher of science]”, etc.
[Reply: Enough with the ‘denialists’. Read the site Policy. ~ mod.]
4. Almost no denialist is aware (from high school or any other source) that science is, and always has been, fundamentally about consensus: achieving it, measuring it, using it to write policy, etc.
5. Denialists have a fondness for making facile, broad-brush generalisations, and will blithely do so with or without a single scholarly reference to substantiate them.
6. Denialists aren’t very good at uncritical reasoning.
7. Denialists generally show a gift for easy hypocrisy. Despite their so-called “science denial,” they are exasperatingly sporadic in their rejection of science. In fact, just about the *only* science they can all be counted on to disbelieve is the existential threat of AGW. Having snubbed the science on climate change, the average denialist will then admit to *accepting* the science on most, virtually all, other questions! I’ve long ago given up trying to hold them to a minimum standard of intellectual consistency—even on evolution or vaccines, it’s rare to find a climate denier principled enough, when challenged, to follow through on rejectionism. I’m sorry to say this, but from frustrating experience I have to conclude that “science denial” is almost totally false advertising.
8. Denialists have an absolute, arrogant sense of entitlement to know stuff—even information that would mislead them, even maths they wouldn’t know what to do with if they tried, even data that could easily be misunderstood in such a way as to give false comfort to delayers.
[Warning: Read the site Policy page. Labeling othrs as “denialists” is a pejorative that is not allowed here. At the very least, it takes the place of thinking. ~ mod.]
@ Brad Keyes
Brad, you give your game away when you use the term “denialist”. It is a clear attempt to impugn by association with holocaust deniers. As it happens, my father was a guest in one of the Fuehrer’s prison camps so I find it particularly offensive.
Yes, I am a sceptic. I am sceptical of many things; it was the way I was brought up. The antonym of sceptical is gullible. Here is a partial list of publications on matters climatic on my bookshelf:
Boundary Layer Climates, TR Oke, Routledge 1987
Climate, History and the Modern World, HH Lamb, Methuen 1982
The Changing Climate: Selected Papers, HH Lamb, Methuen1968
In my collection of climatological documents there is no mention of the kind of stuff that I found in the following:
Heat: How to stop the Planet Burning, George Monbiot, Allen Lane 2006
Global Warming: Can Civilization Survive?, Paul Brown, Blandford 1996
While you may prefer the narrative in the latter, I prefer to obtain my science from credible scientists.
You may not have noticed, but Dr Pat Frank a Ph.D. chemist with more than 50 peer-reviewed articles.has been posting on this very thread. Robert Brown who lectures in physics (thermodynamics) at Duke is also a regular contributor here as well as writing university level physics texts (and.an excellent novel).
Yes, the tinfoil hat brigade also post here, but that’s due to our wonderful host’s policy. I suggest you stop the thinly veiled insults and engage at a less superficial level.
@ Brad Keyes
I will repeat my earlier request. Stop the insults; it won’t wash. If you want to persuade us, you need to engage with us at a higher level. Like explaining where Kevin Trenberth’s missing heat is. Or credible evidence for the existence of the predicted tropospheric hot-spot. This is a very science-friendly place. When you characterise all who post here as anti-science, you merely show just how ignorant you are. It’s not a good image to convey.
Brad Keyes said @ January 22, 2014 at 11:25 am
ROFLMAO!
Brad Keyes said January 22, 2014 at 11:25 am
Now I agree with that statement, though it’s a rather convoluted way of saying we are very good at critical reasoning. I rather thought your thesis was untrue statements were needed to persuade people. Perhaps I’m missing something…
Brad: hate to burst your stereotypical balloon, but I am a Canadian liberal. That would put me in left wing of the Democratic party, if not the socialist wing.
In Oz, I would be a labor party supporter, for the most part.
As for your contention that science is always about consensus? Einstein disagreed with you.
Your
But even the best-mannered denier can’t help using pejorative terms like ‘warmist’, ‘Climatism’, ‘believer,’ ‘catastrophist/alarmist,’
Do you see the hypocricy in this statement? I bolded it for you to make it easy to see.
BTW, what exactly are we in general, and myself in particular, denying?
Brad: Almost forgot. You are, demonstrably, an unrepentant plagiarizer.
Les Johnson said @ January 22, 2014 at 12:59 pm
Not to mention Michael Crichton:
I am old fashioned. “1000 experients will not prove me right. 1 experiment can prove me wrong.”
But Chrichton says the sentiment well, too.
Actually there is a sense that consensus occurs in science and I have written here before about this. What we are taught at the undergraduate level is in a sense consensus or settled science; that is, after several decades certain scientific findings having been thoroughly tested become part of what is called The Received View.
To the best of my knowledge, the CAGW account is not yet part of The Received View. I recently undertook a first year Geology class at UTas and the text book made a passing reference to [paraphrase] some scientists believe in CAGW and then goes on to explain climate consistent with such accounts as imparted by Lamb, Manley and so forth.
If there’s an undergraduate text in the nature of Oke’s Boundary Layer Climates I am unaware of it and no amount of cajoling of warmists has resulted in the discovery of such. It would be I believe akin to what Steve MacIntyre has called for as long as I’ve been aware of Climate Audit.
I’m not holding my breath.
Les,
you write:
“As for your contention that science is always about consensus? Einstein disagreed with you.”
Einstein’s papers were never submitted for peer review (the system that sorts the credible wheat from the incredible chaff). So name-dropping such an “authority” is simply not going to work on me. Did he produce good or crap papers? Who knows. But if he’s the guy who best represents your “side’s” idea (or ideal) of a scientist, then… well, that’s perfect! LOL
Gail, I agree with you about Stanford. I get to live with that stuff.
But that doesn’t vitiate my point that if you wreck academic science to get even, you’re wrecking the source of our prosperity.
If you want to improve our universities, make them honor the tenure contract they have with their faculty. In return for tenure — they can’t be fired for telling the truth — faculty are supposed to be dispassionate in communicating their profession. But faculty now produce advocacy papers and teach advocacy classes. This is a direct violation of the tenure agreement. It seems to me that tax payers have standing to sue public universities about that. By permitting advocacy faculty, they’re failing in their duty to the public.
Universities that systematically fail their duty to the public don’t deserve public funding. Notice, I’m talking budgetary funding, not grant funding. Budgets involve local control, is much more susceptible to local efforts, and is much more likely to succeed than anything on a national scale. It’ll certainly get the university’s attention.
@ Brad Keyes
Einstein’s 1905 papers in the Annalen der Physik were reviewed by one of the journal’s editors, Max Planck, and Wilhelm Wien. On what grounds do you assert that they were not peers of Einstein?
Certainly it was pal review. Nevertheless, they were in any sane estimation peers.
See: http://www.nature.com/nphys/journal/v2/n9/full/nphys407.html
Also, on what grounds do you denigrate Einstein? He had his faults (he was after all a human being) but certainly made a major contribution to 20th C physics.
Brad Keyes says:
January 22, 2014 at 3:15 pm
Peer-review can be used to enforce a false consensus, when it becomes pal-review.
Einstein said never to stop questioning, & he didn´t, including his own conclusions. That attitude allowed him to overturn the consensus Newtonian view of gravitation. Another prominent physicist, Feynman, said, ¨Science is belief in the ignorance of experts”. Another great physicist still living, Dyson (a skeptic of CACA), says, “In the history of science it has often happened that the majority was wrong and refused to listen to a minority that later turned out to be right.”
Consensus is what science exists to show false. That’s how science progresses. Sometimes the consensus is right and stays that way, but usually only after having overthrown a previous consensus. That the earth goes around the sun is one such present consensus.
Copernicus and Galileo were right that the earth is not motionless at the center of concentric spheres, as in the consensus geocentric system of Ptolemy, but moves, turning daily on its axis, while orbiting the sun annually & wobbling on its axis in a ~26,000 year cycle. Galileo was also right about the motion of falling objects, against the Aristotelian consensus, & that heavenly bodies aren’t perfect. Kepler was right that planetary orbits are elliptical, not circular as the consensus held.
Lavoisier showed the consensus phlogiston theory of combustion false.
Louis concluded against the medical consensus that bloodletting was of limited use in fighting pneumonia. Snow persuaded public health officials that cholera was spread by water, not miasmas in the air. The consensus was that malaria was also caused by bad air, not microbes transmitted by mosquitoes. Pasteur showed false the consensus view of the origin of disease, by supporting his germ theory. In the late 20th century, two Australian doctors showed the consensus about the cause of stomach ulcers wrong.
In the 18th century, the consensus was still that the earth is just 6000 years old, but geology showed that belief wrong. In the 19th century, the consensus was only tens of millions of years, then radioactivity was discovered.
In the 20th century, the consensus was that the continents don’t drift, until Wegener was vindicated by the discovery of seafloor spreading. The consensus was also that the channeled scablands of E. Washington State were not formed in a series of great floods, until the “settled science” advocates died off & Bretz outlived them to be recognized as right all along.
In the 20th century, the consensus was that the universe is stable, until Hubble showed that it is expanding & Penzias & Wilson found the CMBR, evidence for the Big Bang.
The crazy, cockamamie delusion of CACA will go the same way as phlogiston, once the grant money supporting the anti-human, corrupt cult dries up, its high druids retire & nature herself falsifies the absurd idea that man-made CO2 is the main driver of climate change.
Brad Keyes: your
Did he produce good or crap papers? Who knows. But if he’s the guy who best represents your “side’s” idea (or ideal) of a scientist, then… well, that’s perfect! LOL
History judges that he produced some very good papers. Which shows the veracity of his saying about only needing 1 paper to disprove him.
Your denigrating one history’s greatest theorists is interesting.
Still avoiding the plagiarism issue, I see.
John Tillman says:
January 22, 2014 at 3:51 pm
CACA perhaps most resembles the Ptolemaic system among past consensuses, since like geocentric models & even heliocentric systems with circular orbits, it must keep multiplying figurative epicycles to explain away the contrary observations owing to its fundamental falsehood. It’s also supported by the modern equivalent of a priesthood.
Les Johnson said @ January 22, 2014 at 3:53 pm
Interesting too that he has yet to provide evidence of an undergraduate text of the calibre of Oke. Also interesting that while he claims we are anti-science, it is he who denigrates three excellent scientists in particular, all of whose theories are part of The Received View in physics.
Also I note that both Einstein and Wien were Jews. While not Jewish, Planck got himself into much bother for advocating what was called “Jewish Physics” and attempting to persuade the German Chancellor to stop the ejection of Jewish physicists from the universities. Of course the US was a great beneficiary of the introduction of Deutsche Physik. They eagerly embraced the likes of Edward Teller, Victor Weisskopf, Hans Bethe, and Max Born much to the regret of Japan.
The Pompous Git says:
January 22, 2014 at 4:20 pm
Max Born was Olivia Newton-John´s maternal grandfather.
Wonder if Brad denies the Holocaust along with physical reality.
@ milodonharlani
I had no idea who Olivia Neutron Bomb’s relatives were, though she was a member of my community some time ago and for all I know, still is. Sadly, she is a member of one of the groups who have “saved” our forests. One of those forests is burning away merrily right now quite close to me. I can hear the helicopters as I type, especially when they take water from my dam.
I suspect that we will be subjected to some further evidence of Brad’s somewhat tenuous grasp of reality given he has already made several posts. I don’t believe that he will come up with any substantive responses to my questions.
The Pompous Git says:
January 22, 2014 at 4:53 pm
It was necessary to burn the forests in order to save them. Or save them in order to burn them. Same happens in Oregon, of course, & throughout the US West, on a colossal scale.
Yes, unfortunately, Miss N-J didn´t inherit analytical ability from her distinguished grandfather. She was born in Cambridge, so might also be related to Sir Isaac, although her dad IIRC is Welsh. Sir Isaac of course had no kids of his own & probably never even engaged in sex. Newton’s half-niece however was the mistress of a powerful nobleman until his death, followed by her marriage.
@ Pompous Git — I’m very much hoping that my using “Sunny Side of the Street” (here: http://wattsupwiththat.com/2014/01/21/quote-of-the-week-sensationalizing-for-the-greater-good/#comment-1544466) to honor your dear friend, Tony, was not offensive to you… . You never said anything and I don’t want to assume you simply didn’t take the time to reply. If I offended you, PLEASE forgive me.
Janice
@ Janice Moore
There’s a saying in Australia “Don’t take offence, the farmer needs it to keep the cattle in.” No offence intended, so why would I be offended? I wouldn’t call Tony a “dear” friend; we weren’t all that close. He was though one of the most extraordinarily kind-hearted person I ever met. Only a handful of people turned up to his retirement party a few years back, so I almost felt obliged to attend his funeral. I need not have worried; there was a surprisingly large turnout. Attending funerals, and there are quite a few to attend when you reach your 60s I have discovered, becomes a little wearying at times.
I have asked SWMBO to have the whole of Brahms’ Ein Deutsches Requiem played at my own funeral and my brother-in-law to be the celebrant. He insists he needs at least ten years’ notice 😉
Thank you, so much, Pompous Git, for responding. Don’t take a fence, lol. Glad to know you were not offended. And, good for you to plan your own service (and what lovely music you have chosen). That is one of the kindest things you can do for your loved ones (that and having your estate planning up to date).
Janice: I want to thank you for your helpful research in helping me better find sources of information. You’re gem!
[Snip. You wasted a long comment, calling others “denialists”. Read the site Policy. ~ mod.]
@ milodonharlani,
“[Olivia Newton-John] was born in Cambridge, so might also be related to Sir Isaac”
Of course. I thought everyone knew they were related—what else would have moved a bimbonic ditz like ON-J to compose that stirring paean, ‘Physical,’ for the titan of mechanics and optics?
Brad Keyes said @ January 23, 2014 at 1:49 am
More [trimmed] from Brad! Physical was written by Steve Kipner and and Terry Shaddick, not Newton-John.
[Snip. Read the site Policy. ~ mod.]
Brad Keyes:
Thankyou for your rant at January 23, 2014 at 3:25 am. Brilliant!
I had to stop when I reached the reference to Oreskes because I was laughing so much that it hurt.
When I recovered I read the other half of your rant including your list of daft questions. Superb!
More of the same. please. And if our American brethren cannot see the joke then that is their loss, but please provide the rest of us with more laughs.
Richard
richardscourtney says:
More of the same. please. And if our American brethren cannot see the joke then that is their loss, but please provide the rest of us with more laughs.
The more I read Brad’s responses here, the more I tend to agree. What’s troublesome, though, is how difficult it has become to tell the difference between satire & serious writing. Two years ago, I would have considered “Global warming will cause another Ice Age” to be satire, but they’re seriously saying it now…
John Tillman,
It’s surprising that you cite the authority of noted science expert Richard Feynman, the physical giant and scientific polymath who more-or-less started *and* completed the field of quantum electrodynamics:
“Another prominent physicist, Feynman, said, ¨Science is belief in the ignorance of experts”. ”
What would he know?
John, I’m afraid this transparently invalid, indeed self-invalidating, manoeuvre on your part was credibility seppuku. Such Jedi mind tricks may be considered kosher among a coterie of soi-disant skeptics, but I’ve read my quota of all-Cretans-are-liars rhetoric. Children could read it. Did that occur to you? Children—who lack the critical faculties to resist assenting to its fallacious charms—could read it and believe it. Which means another satisfied customer for the Merchants of Doubt. The experts are telling us we’re sleepwalking towards a planetary cliff—and I used to wonder why people didn’t believe them! Well, if Oreskes’ book hadn’t told me the answer, the present mala-fide exchange would.
@ Brad Keyes
You say:
and then are dismissive of experts including Einstein, Planck, Wein and Feynman, all Nobel prize-winners. Genuine Nobel prizewinners, not bogus as in Mann’s claim to possess such.
So, which is it? Do we pay close attention to what experts tell us, or not? Thus far you contradict yourself.
Dear Moderator,
In my outreach on behalf of the science, it has always been my deeply-held personal tactic to show the maximum possible respect for, and interest in, those who say the science fails to move them. Nonetheless, you noticed in my comments a certain credal designation, a variant spelling of denihilist, with which I referred to the demographic to which the word does, indeed, apply according to just about any academic who studies public climate perceptions. This appears to have been cause for suppressing the entire comment.
I could easily have used different language, but I started using the technical term in question because The Pompous Git had already used it, lulling me into the delusion that such terminology was permitted here.
If you could kindly forward me my unacceptable comments I would gladly amend the language so as to respect the house style rules and repost them.
As I’m sure you’ll agree, the debate already has enough toxic factors without adding climate deletionism!
Thank you
Brad Keyes
[Reply: Read the site Policy, which clarifies what is acceptable here. There is also a big difference between the way the PG used the term, and the insulting way that you used it. Labeling others as “denialists” is not just insulting, it takes the place of thinking. That term, and its variants, is used constantly in other forums, and whenever you see those terms, you are seeing an admission that the labeler has no real facts in support of his argument. ~ mod.]
Well, I guess commentators have given Brad Keyes a painful enough spanking that he’s finally gone away.
I would have like to hear his defense of the plagiarism charge, though, and his explanation of ‘global warming is causing another ice age’…
Oh, well. The alarmist crowd never has been able to make a credible argument.
@ dbstealey
We’ve been had! See: http://wattsupwiththat.com/2014/01/21/the-man-behind-climate-nuremberg-explains-why-he-thinks-sensationalizing-climate-claims-is-justified/#more-101924
Let me see the deleted comments from Brad Keyes. I missed this the first time round. Just saw my father refer to them on the later thread…
(To attract the mods I’ll quote some of his d-words):
He’s hilarious. What other gold lies hidden underneath the SNIP?
Unlock the Keyes!